


heavy is the head that wears the cowl

by sunkelles



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Bart Allen is Artemis's annoying little brother, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Young Justice Week 2018, summeryjweek2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 07:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15529650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunkelles/pseuds/sunkelles
Summary: Jaime and Bart both deal with changes in their superhero status after season two. As Bart tries to fill his dead cousin’s shoes, Jaime tries to fight off his reputation as a traitor.





	heavy is the head that wears the cowl

**Author's Note:**

> Happy summer young justice week! The prompt of the day is “Season 3”. Instead of doing something cool and creative I did Jaime and Bart centric angst, which is my calling card in this fandom when I’m not writing snaibsel. 
> 
> Title of course comes from the phrase “heavy lies the crown” but this one is specifically from the Katy Perry song “Who Am I Living For?” and the line “heavy is the head that wears the crown don’t let the greatness get you down”. I’m not the biggest Katy Perry fan but I love this song. 
> 
> The “cowl” part refers to the superhero costume/mask/legacy. I know it’s not the most frequently used term but “battle for the cowl” is a famous enough batman comic that I thought I could use it without too much confusion.

The people love Kid Flash.

When he arrives on the scene, people cheer. They shout. They’re so excited to have him back after years of retirement that all they can do is praise him. The only catch? The people love Wally’s Kid Flash. They don’t have a clue how they feel about Bart’s.

The League wants him to pretend to be Wally. He already acts a lot like Wally, so it’s really not that hard. Except when he remembers that Wally is dead, and that he’s parading around in his dead cousin’s clothes, trying to convince the public that he’s not dead.

Whenever he remembers that things get a whole lot harder. He doesn’t know if it’s right or not, pretending to be Wally, but he knows that’s the expectation and he doesn’t know what he could do to make it better.

So he smiles for the cameras, and he waves, and he cracks the jokes that Wally would have cracked. They’re almost the same ones as he would crack normally.

_This is fine_ , he tells himself, even though he knows it’s not.

* * *

 

The people hate Blue Beetle.

When he arrives on the scene, people jeer. They shout. He’s never had a tomato thrown at him, but there _was_ a churro. He thinks it’s the same basic sentiment. The only catch? People hate the Reach-controlled puppet version of him. They don’t have any clue that he wasn’t acting of his own free will, and if the League has their way, they never will.

Jaime is under strict orders not to divulge anything to the press. Admitting that the Reach mind-controlled him exposes a weakness in the Justice League’s apparatus and gives supervillains ideas. He’s a low-profile enough hero that the League thinks that building him up as a reformed villain is their best bet.

Jaime’s pride begs to differ. He feels enough like a villain without people shouting “traitor” at him whenever he has to put his armor back on. Sticks and stones may break his bones, but these particular words aren’t really helping his fragile emotional state after the trauma of having his body stolen by an organization trying to enslave humanity.

But he deals with it. At this point, he doesn’t have any other options. He can’t imagine the consequences if he went against a direct order from the Justice League. So he wears the mask and puts up with the defamation to his character.

_This is fine_ , he tells himself, even though he knows it’s not.

* * *

 

Bart does everything that he can to be Kid FlashTM, but apparently, it’s not even to convince everyone that he’s the same one.

“Kid Flash,” the reporter says, pushing her round, black glasses further up her face, “may I have a moment of your time?” Bart knows that Wally would agree immediately, and probably say something flirty to the woman despite his fear of pissing off his girlfriend. But Bart is gay, he doesn't really think that his cousin should have been flirting with women just doing their jobs, and he doesn't even really want to talk to her anyway. Bart doesn't like giving interviews, but they expect one every once in awhile from sweet, personable Kid Flash.

So he speeds up to her, blowing her black hair behind her like she’s just been hit by a strong gust of wind.

“Of course,” he says, even though he’d rather not talk at all, “whaddya wanna ask?” The woman’s look turns serious, and Bart suddenly fears he’s been tricked into something far more treacherous than he expected.

“What happened to the old Kid Flash?” the reporter demands.

“What do you mean?” Bart asks, hoping that his nervous energy isn't obvious, “I _am_ Kid Flash.” The woman rolls her dark brown eyes.

“Don't treat me like I’m stupid, Kid Flash. Your hair is auburn, not ginger. You look ten years younger than the last one, and you don’t sound the same. That’s evidence enough.” Then, she looks him straight in the eyes, her almost black irises boring into his soul.

“You aren’t the same Kid Flash.”

Bart is not morally opposed to lying. He lies all the time. He lies about how bad his future is and what he’d like for dinner and his opinions on that shirt Joan gave him for Christmas. (It’s crash! he’d exclaimed. It was actually totally moding.) He lies about where he runs to and he lies about his nightmares and he lies to Jaime about not being able to pronounce Spanish words and he lies to Artemis about feeling alright while she lies about that right back. Bart _can_ lie. He doesn’t mind lying, and he’s good at it.

Bart’s adaptable. He doesn’t think that there’s anything wrong with bending the truth or fudging something or just downright keeping information if it’s not pertinent or if he thinks that it’s smarter to keep his cards to his chest. Lying doesn’t bother him.

Lying to a reporter’s face about being his dead cousin? That kind of does. He thinks that lie would crawl into his stomach and rot there if he did that, so he doesn’t.

“I’m not,” he admits.

“What happened to him?” she asks.

And here come Bart’s lying skills. It’s even a little easier than normal because he can tell her what should have been the truth.

“He retired to go to school and spend time with his girlfriend,” he tells her. Bart feels like a parent telling their kid that Spot had to go to this nice man’s farm in the country forever. He’s totally fine, they just can’t ever see their doggo again.

“Really?” she asks. She doesn't buy it.

“Superheros have lives too, you know,” Bart says, “he wanted to get back to his.”

“He came back a few months ago,” she says, “wouldn’t he have just stayed in retirement then?”

“The fate of the world was in the balance,” Bart says, “what self-respecting hero _wouldn’t_ have come out of retirement for that? Even if it was just a few days.” The reporter looks taken aback.

“That’s a fair point,” she concedes. Bart holds out an arm and pretends to check the watch that they both know he doesn’t have.

“Wow,” he says pointedly, “look at the time. I’ve got to run.”

“Kid Flash,” she says, meeting his eyes, “thank you.” Bart nods back at her, grateful that she doesn’t call him out on the lame excuse or ask him further questions. Then, he runs back home as fast as he can, which, as a speedster, is pretty damn fast.

He collapses into his bed, grateful that Joan and Jay know when to give him space. He needs space tonight, just to think about the implications of what he’s done. He disobeyed League Orders, gave up a League secret, and _still_ managed to outright lie to the press.

Maybe Bart should have asked Tim about this. He’d considered it once or twice. As the third Robin, the kid has the most experience with navigating the change in superhero mantle, especially as someone stepping into a dead man’s shoes. Everyone on earth knows that Robin has changed at least once, and Gotham has just sort of gotten used to a change of person under the mask. Bart really should ask him how that happened, how he’s dealt with it, but Bart just doesn’t like him much. He’s not too keen on anyone who calls Jaime a traitor, especially not people who know better.

Well, the damage is already done now. It’s no use beating himself up over not getting the guy’s advice at this point. All he can do is sleep it off and hope that it doesn’t become the scandal he worries it might be by the morning.

* * *

  


That morning in El Paso, Texas, someone wakes up to a scandal. It just isn’t Bart. Jaime opens the front door and picks up his parents’ copy of _El Diario de El Paso_ because he’s the first one up and downstairs this morning _._ He carries it to the kitchen table, barely sparing the thing a second glance. It is a newspaper after all. It’s 2016 and he’s sixteen years old. He doesn’t have any real interest in reading his news from a dead tree, but he catches a glance of the picture on the front bag.

It’s him in full Blue Beetle armor, fighting off a mugger a few nights ago in front of Sun Bowl Stadium. Jaime’s not entirely absorbed by his superhero persona the way that the Bats and Supers get, but, well. He’s only human. He likes to know what people are saying about him, and he hasn’t had any good press since the incident with the Reach. He could use a pick-me-up.

“¿Un Supervillano de El Paso?” the headline asks.

Supervillain? That term’s a bit extreme to use on a mugger, but Jaime will take it. An overhyped win is still a win. He starts skimming the article, and none of it makes any sense. He catches something about using excessive force on civilians. Then there’s another bit about the Justice League being stupid for giving someone a second chance.

It hits him all at once, like a bucket of ice water dumped on his head. The supervillain was _him_ . They weren’t applauding him for taking down a mugger, they were publicly deriding him for it. He’s fighting off a mugger and they’ve made _him_ the bad guy.

He doesn’t read the rest, doesn’t think that he can without tearing up. Instead, he shoves the paper back down on the table and nearly runs upstairs.

_Jaime Reyes, you are making excessive noise and it is early in the morning,_ Khaji says, _you will anger your parental units._

But his dad doesn’t shout and Milagro doesn’t whine and his mom doesn’t come through the door and ask, “what’s wrong, mijo?” so Jaime thinks that he’s either avoided attracting their attention or he seems so upset that they’ve decided to give him space.

He has to go to school after this, drag his ass all the way there to do algebra and talk about Shakespeare and try not to blow up the chem lab. He’s going to have to do all of that while he feels like the sky has fallen down on his chest.

_Jaime Reyes,_ Khaji Da says, _you are in no condition to attend school._

“I can’t call in sick,” he says, “I just missed a whole week for Team stuff.” He can’t risk using the sick days he has left on something as frivolous as his emotions when he might need them for the Team.

_You cannot do nothing, Jaime Reyes,_ Khaji Da scolds. The scarab is right on that front. Jaime knows that he can’t just wallow here and do nothing, and he can’t exactly tell his parents. They still don’t know that he’s Blue Beetle and he doesn’t know how they’ll react.

He doesn’t want to find out from a newspaper article calling him a supervillain. He needs to talk to someone, though. If he goes to school feeling like this he thinks that he might actually _become_ a supervillain. Jaime decides to call Tye.

It’s six thirty and his best friend normally doesn’t drag his ass out of bed until seven thirty, but Jaime’s hoping that he has his phone beside his head.

“This had better be important,” Tye groans into the phone. He sounds dead inside. This is zombie Tye at his finest.

“Gracias a dios,” Jaime says, “I’m so happy to hear you.”

“What do you need, Jaime?”

“Guess what I saw in the paper this morning,” Jaime says.

“I have no idea,” Tye says, and now he’s skipped over the dead and groggy stage of waking up directly to the biting and sarcastic stage, “some of us are normal teenagers who don’t come into contact with newspapers.”

“Tye-”

“No, really,” Tye says, “I think I’d age sixty years if I touched a newspaper.” An image of a Tye that’s as old as his grandfather flashes through Jaime’s brain.

“Hey,” Jaime says, “ _El Diario de El Paso_ is aimed at young readers.” He doesn’t read the thing, but he feels a little inclined to defend it. His parents love their newspaper, even if their newspaper doesn’t love him.

“Uh huh,” Tye says, “so it’s aimed at people sixty and up.”

“Can we be serious for a second?” Jaime asks. Apparently, Tye catches on to the fact that he actually had a good reason to call him at this ungodly hour.

“Shit,” Tye says, “what did it say?”

“It showed a picture of me fighting off a mugger outside the Sun Bowl Stadium and asked if El Paso had its own supervillian,” Jaime says.

“I don’t see the problem,” Tye says, and then he pauses.

“Shit! That meant you, not the mugger?”

“Sí,” Jaime says.

“I’m sorry,” Tye says, “that sucks.”

“I just wanted to be a superhero,” Jaime says, “Instead I got a murder bug on my back, mind-controlled, and the whole world thinking I’m a supervillian.”

_I am more than a murder bug, hermano,_ Khaji Da reminds him.

_Yes_ , Jaime thinks back at him, _you’re so much more than a murder bug._ The rest of those complaints still stand, though.

“You don’t have to be a hero, you know,” Tye says, “You can just quit if the stress of the press is getting to you.”

“I do have to,” Jaime says. He can’t imagine having these powers and not using them to help people. That’s why he’s the one that ended up with the scarab in the first place. He might not believe in God’s will the same way that his parents do, but he does believe that he has an obligation to use these powers for good now that he has them.

Jaime’s not sure if this is part of some cosmic plan, but he _is_ sure that he can’t go back now. He’s a hero, even if the rest of the world thinks he’s a villain.

“You really don’t,” Tye says, “you don’t _have_ to, just because the world spat superpowers at you.”

Tye sighs.

“You know _I_ don’t. I’ll help if the whole world’s in peril again, but I don’t want to be a superhero.” His best friend has never been the most altruistic person he knows. Jaime can’t really blame him for that either.

“I understand, Tye,” Jaime says, “but that’s not me. I can’t just sit back and do nothing.”

“Well,” Tye says, “then you’ve just got to keep saving people. Keep being that hero you always have been. Then maybe people will start catching on.” Jaime sighs. He can’t correct those people, and he knows that trying his hardest won’t make people change their minds about the person that they think he is. He doubts if anyone will catch on to what he is anytime soon.

“Thanks Tye,” he lies, “that really helped.” It helped some, but it didn’t come close to solving the problem. Jaime hangs up the phone, and lies back in his bed. He looks up at the ceiling, and tries not to think about the day ahead.

The sky is blue, El Paso is home, and the world still thinks he’s a supervillain. The world might think he’s a supervillain no matter what he does.

* * *

  


When Bart gets home from school that day, he googles himself. Maybe it’s vain, but he wants to see if the news that he’s not the same Kid Flash has dropped already. The first article that pops up is the same wikipedia page as always, but the second one is an article with the _Central City Star_ dated this morning. He knows that it was written by the reporter he spoke to. He clicks it.

“A New Kid Flash Under the Cowl?” the headline asks.

The first line of the article says, “There’s a new Kid Flash in town, but he seemed determined not to let the world know about the change under the cowl. Why the cover up? What is this new Kid Flash hiding?”

He knew that this news was going to come out soon, but looking at it himself, seeing the implications blazing across his laptop screen, Bart realizes he wasn’t prepared for this at all. He immediately starts running as a nervous habit, just to get off his feet and stop _thinking_ for a moment. He doesn’t really decide to talk to Artemis as much as start running blindly and end up in Palo Alto. His subconscious makes the decision for him.

He knocks on her door and waits for her to answer. It feels like it takes _forever_ for her to answer, but that might just be his anxiety and his superspeed mixing together to speed up time.

“Bart?” she asks, looking at him with concern, “what’s wrong?”

“I-kind-of-told-a-reporter-I’m-not-Wally,” Bart blurts out.

“Bart, you have to slow down,” Artemis says. She might be used to speedster speak, but Bart remembers that she doesn't understand it.

“I told a reporter that I’m not Wally,” Bart says, saying the words as slowly as he possibly can.

“I thought the League told you not to talk about it?” Artemis asks, her voice not as strong and confident as it normally is. Him being Kid Flash has been hard on both of them.

“They did,” Bart says, “but this lady, she knew that I wasn’t him. She asked me what happened to him. I couldn’t tell her that I was him- I just- I couldn’t.” He can feel the tears building, and it’s so stupid. Artemis is the one that lost Wally. She’s the one that knew him- Bart doesn’t have the right to dump more Wally-related grief on her. But she wraps her arms around him in and hug and Bart melts into the warm embrace.

“What’d you say happened to him?” Artemis asks, rubbing circles in his back.

“I said that he retired to be with his girlfriend,” he says, and his voice cracks as the tears fall.

“Oh Bart,” her voice cracks right back, and she hugs him tighter.

“Maybe he did,” she says, “in a better world.” Bart holds her, clinging to her like a lifeline. He thinks about the world that they almost had, when Wally asked Bart to be Kid Flash and he thought it would be a gentle passing of the torch from mentor to protege and not something Wally would have to die to give away.

He thinks about a world where Artemis is happy and Bart being part of the Flash legacy didn’t cost his cousin his life. But that world isn’t this one, and Tigress and the new Kid Flash mourn that world as they hug in the entryway of a half-empty Palo Alto apartment.

* * *

 

  


Press scandals don’t stay secret forever. By the next day when the Team meets for a training, everyone knows both stories. Luckily, though, they have enough tact not to bring it up. Except Jaime and Bart, they’re at the point in their friendship where tact goes out the wayside. Once everyone’s cleared out of the locker room, it’s time for a conversation.

“So,” Jaime says, leaning against his locker, “people figured out that you’re Kid Flash the second.” Bart leans up against his own right beside him.

“Yup. People are calling you the supervillain of El Paso?”

“Sí." 

They exchange a look. _We’re so fucked._

“We’re up crap mountain with no paddle,” Bart says.

“That’s not the expression,” Jaime says.

“Just a creek’s not enough shit for this mess,” Bart says firmly, “we need a mountain.” Jaime’s brain immediately thinks that maybe Bart is making a mountain out of a molehill, and then he laughs.

“You know that saying, _don’t make a mountain out of a molehill?_ ” Bart nods.

Jaime asks, “You think that’s what a molehill is? A mound of mole shit?” Bart bursts out laughing.

“Oh her-man-oh,” Bart says, in his most exaggerated tone of voice, “I sure _hope_ so. They told me not to make a mountain out of a molehill? Ha! I made a whole mountain _out_ of mole shit, thank you very much!”

Bart laughs loudly at his own joke. It’s not even funny. It’s vulgar and childish and the joke doesn’t even hit, but god, Jaime _laughs._ He laughs until his sides hurt, and the sound of his laughter melds together with Bart’s.

They really are wading through a mountain of shit, aren’t they? They’re not dealing with the same sort of shit, exactly, but Jaime’s glad that they’re going through it together. That actually _does_ help him. Maybe it helps Bart too.

For a moment, they’re just a pair of dumb teenage boys, laughing about shitty shit jokes so that they don’t cry. Really, when it comes down to it, they’re just two kids suffocating under the weight of their masks.


End file.
